"Plans for compulsory ID cards will be shelved in a government U-turn today," the Mirror announces. Despite all the controversy surrounding the cards, the "exclusive" story is buried on page 9. The other papers running the story also relegate it to the inside pages.

The Mirror reports: "Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will announce people will no longer be forced to get an identity card when they apply for a new passport." But foreigners from outside Europe living in Britain, as well as Britons working in airports "or other terror targets", are expected to be told they must have cards. A vote on making cards compulsory nationwide is expected to be delayed, possibly until 2015.

The paper is cock-a-hoop in its leader: "The scrapping of compulsory Identity Cards ditches an expensive and unpopular big-brother scheme," it says. "Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith deserve credit for effectively killing off another toxic legacy of the Blair era."

The Mail says passport applicants will not be offered a separate biometric identity card until at least 2012. "The Home Office will stress that - even after 2012 - ID cards will remain voluntary." But it adds: "Home Office sources insist the Government remains firmly committed to the cards, which are fiercely opposed by civil liberties campaigners and the main Opposition parties."

"A shaming day for democracy" is the front-page headline on today's Mail, which is predictably furious about last night's vote against a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. The government won the vote by 311 to 248 despite some Labour MPs rebelling and three Liberal Democrat frontbenchers resigning so they could defy the party leader, Nick Clegg, and back a referendum.

The Mail is not the only paper spitting blood about the failure of Labour and the Lib Dems to honour their election pledges to hold a referendum on a new constitution. (Opponents to a public vote claim the treaty is merely an amendment to the existing constitution.)

The Express calls it "A dismal day for democracy" and its leader is eerily similar to that of the Mail. The latter says: "What hope is there for democracy, when MPs pledge one thing to get elected - and then do the exact opposite when the voters have given them their trust?" The Mail's anger is far from reserved for the government, describing the Lib Dems' position as "equally morally contemptible - perhaps even more so" and branding Clegg "pathetic".

The Express says last night's vote "will only accelerate the loss of faith in politics" and describes Clegg as "equally despicable" to Gordon Brown. "Mr Brown is not fit to lead Britain, while Mr Clegg is only a suitable figure to lead the Lib Dems because his party is ridiculous," it rails. Ouch!

Not for the first time on this issue, the Sun leader writer dons his or her balaclava and goes all heavy mob on the prime minister: "Mr Brown deserves to be held to account for such a fundamental and far-reaching breach of promise. The Sun will make sure that he is." Still, at least the Mirror is happy: "These sneaky opportunists, who were trying to pull Britain out of the world's greatest trading market, have lost for ever," it says smugly.

It is left to the Guardian sketchwriter Simon Hoggart to sum up last night's proceedings. "The Commons is most ferocious when all sides know they are wrong," he writes. "Labour knows that it should have held a referendum, but won't because it would lose. The Tories know a referendum would be catastrophic; it would set us back in Europe for years. And the Lib Dems want a referendum on whether we should stay in at all because they can't think of anything else."

The Independent, which last month brought to international attention the case of an Afghan student journalist condemned to death for distributing articles on women's rights, today takes up the fight for another human rights victim.

"A gay teenager who sought sanctuary in Britain when his boyfriend was executed by the Iranian authorities now faces the same fate after losing his legal battle for asylum," it reports. "Mehdi Kazemi, 19, came to London to study English in 2004 but later discovered that his boyfriend had been arrested by the Iranian police, charged with sodomy and hanged."

Kazemi claimed asylum in Britain after finding out his boyfriend had named him under interrogation, but his case was refused late last year. "Terror-stricken at the prospect of deportation," the Independent says, he fled to Holland but was detained. "He appeared before a Dutch court yesterday to plead with the authorities not to return him to Britain where he is almost certain to be sent back to Iran."

The danger to Kazemi if he is returned is illustrated by shocking figures from Iranian human rights campaigners who claim more than 4,000 gay men and lesbians have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that the British government said yesterday Tehran could still be developing a nuclear weapon, "and called into question a key American intelligence finding that work on building an Iranian bomb had stopped in 2003".

"A major tightening of the law governing the oversight of drugs companies will be announced today when the government says GlaxoSmithKline delayed informing the authorities that a controversial drug increased the likelihood of suicide among teenagers," reports the Guardian.

The move comes in the wake of problems with the antidepressant Seroxat "of which the company [GSK] had been aware as early as 1998".

Under existing law GSK has done nothing wrong, and the company has always rejected allegations that it improperly withheld data on the drug. The Guardian says new legislation to be introduced by the end of the year will "ensure drugs companies pass on results of clinical trials as soon as the alarm is raised about one of their medicines".

Predictions that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is about to get nasty - or nastier - abound in today's papers after Hillary Clinton's victory in the Ohio and Texas primaries on Tuesday. Michael Tomasky, in the Guardian, is certainly not alone when he warns about the effects such a development could have on the Democratic party.

"More mud will be slung, more aggressively and creatively and panoramically than before," he writes. "And that carries a big risk for Democrats: that Clinton's and Barack Obama's disparate constituencies - quickly calcifying along class lines already - will become more antagonistic towards each other, meaning that whichever Democrat ends up winning the nomination will have a devil of a time persuading the other candidate's loyalists to support him or her."

The Telegraph has on its front page a smiling Clinton with her daughter, Chelsea. It warns ominously that Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, signalled the Democratic frontrunner "would respond aggressively" to attacks from his rival. The paper reports he has already demanded that Clinton release her tax returns.

Michael Powell and Jeff Zelezny in the International Herald Tribune warn there is a downside to the Illinois senator playing the bad guy. "The problem is that Obama has built a campaign persona as the man of hope, a young candidate with oratorical skills who promises to build bridges across the ideological divide," they write. "If he indulges his inner Chicago pol, formed in a city where politics is conducted with crowbars, he risks taking the shine off. But his advisers say he has little choice."

The Telegraph says John McCain, who received a formal endorsement as the Republican candidate for president at the White House, must be rubbing his hands at the prospect of Democratic infighting. While Clinton's hint at a possible double ticket with Obama is widely reported, the predictions of a dirty fight would seem to make that an unlikely prospect.

Several papers including the Mail run a bizarre set of pictures of schoolchildren in Clacton, Essex. The pictures, posted on the website of Cann Hall primary school, show the pupils doing the normal things young people do - but with their faces substituted by smiley faces.

Apparently, their faces have been covered up not because they are all acid house fans but to protect them from paedophiles. The phrase "political correctness gone mad" is one of the most overused in the English language, but for once it seems appropriate.

One paper that could not be accused of political correctness is the Sun, which leads with the headline "Harry back in Chelsea". He reportedly spent a "cosy night" with his girlfriend, Chelsy (with a "y"), in west London.